Microbes may often be present on many common objects and surfaces in everyday life. Examples include, for example, bacteria, fungi, spores, viruses, prions, microorganisms such as, e.g., Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Listeria monocytogenas, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhimurium, Salmonella enteritidis, Yersinia pestis, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Enterobacter aerogenes Streptococcus faecalis, Legionella pneumophila, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Bacillus cereus, and other gram positive and gram negative bacteria. Several such microbes/microorganisms, individually or in combination, can cause illness or other health problems, for example, when they come into contact with humans and/or animals, or when they are ingested along with food which has contacted them. These microbes present health hazards due to infection or contamination.
Public and private facilities such as, e.g., restrooms, may also contain surfaces which can harbor and spread microbes, leading to potential health problems. To address this issue, products such as antimicrobial soaps and air dryers for hands may be offered, as well as disposable paper towels. Nevertheless, microbes may still be harbored on such objects as faucet and toilet handles, door knobs, keys, dispenser levers, etc.
In the transportation industry, including land, sea, air, and space vehicles, there may also be particular surfaces which can harbor and spread microbes, leading to potential health problems. For example, rental cars may benefit from durable antimicrobial surfaces (both interior and exterior). In particular, isolated environments such as, e.g., airplanes and submarines can also be safer if provided with antimicrobial surfaces.
Other common objects may benefit from antimicrobial compositions, which can inhibit or prevent spread of microorganisms between people and/or animals that come into contact with such objects. For example, musical instruments, such as harmonicas, flutes, clarinets, etc., computer peripherals, communications equipment such as, e.g., telephones, pet accessories such as leashes and carriers, and/or other common household objects could benefit from antimicrobial surfaces.
One can see that there is a continuing need for improved antimicrobial cleanings, coatings, and sanitizers which are durable and effective in rapid and high level killing or inhibiting growth of microbes such as bacteria and other microorganisms.
There is a need to provide such materials and coatings which are easy and relatively inexpensive to produce, which have a long life time of killing, which do not wear off easily, and which may be applied to a broad variety of substrates.
In addition, there is a need for such antimicrobial coatings which can be applied to objects that are already in use (clean in place) or that are in need of repair.
While most currently available sanitizers and disinfectants provide immediate kill properties when contaminated surfaces are exposed to the antimicrobial agent for the specified contact time, there is no assurance that the surface will remain safe for use. In fact, the next time a contaminated object, animate or inanimate, touches the surface it may be re-contaminated. Therefor there remains a need for a product capable of enabling continued germicidal efficacy. Also, in janitorial and building maintenance cleaning there is a material advantage to reducing the number of products that are needed for cleaning and disinfecting. Reducing the number of cleaning products simplifies training, use, storage, etc. The ability to combine a glass cleaner and disinfectant cleaner eliminates the need for at least one product. However many germicidal cleaners are not acceptable for this purpose as they leave an unsightly streaky residue after cleaning.
Also, it is known that one of the main sources of food poisoning is the norovirus. Norovirus is particularly onerous in the long-term care environment, food service and cruise ship industries. Norovirus is an unenveloped virus. Unenveloped viruses are well known to be more difficult to kill than enveloped viruses and many vegetative bacteria. Norovirus is particularly resistant to inactivation by certain antimicrobial agents including quaternary ammonium chlorides.
There remains a need for a germicidal cleaner that possesses a multiplicity of performance properties including disinfection, virucidal efficacy, glass cleaning performance and residual sanitizing. While any one or two of these properties can be achieved using known formulation means, combining all of the properties is not difficult for many reasons including the fact that certain ingredients that may enable one property may act antagonistically to another property. For example, it is known that amine oxide surfactants can enable glass cleaning performance, the) tend to diminish certain biocidal properties. Organic solvents may act to improve certain properties, but there is a need to minimize the use of volatile organic solvents to reduce smog formation in urban environments.
The present invention provides anti-microbial compositions which address one or more of the aforementioned needs as well as others which will become apparent form the description of the invention which follows.